Staining of the parts of electronic apparatuses such as semiconductor components and magnetic recording media causes significant deterioration in the performance of the parts. Accordingly, it has been the practice to keep the surfaces of parts clean by wiping stain off the surface with hand using wiping cloth made of fine fibers.
Such an operation as shown in FIG. 5 is also practiced wherein recessed surfaces are cleaned with a pointed stick wrapped with a wiping tape 1a, that is, a narrow strip cut from the wiping cloth 1 described above. Alternatively, it has been proposed to wind the wiping tape 1a described above in a roll and press the wiping tape 1a against an object (hard disk, etc.) to be cleaned while unwinding the wiping tape 1a (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-106229, etc.).
However, as the electronic parts become smaller, with higher precision, recently it has been required to clean the inside of cylindrical objects having diameters of 1 to 2 mm or bumps and recesses about 1 mm across, such as the inside of a bearing for a hard disk motor and the terminals of liquid crystal display panel. The conventional wiping tape 1a is not capable of meeting these requirements.
In particular it is noted that thermal cutting has been used to cut the wiping tape 1a. Since thermal cutting cuts off fibers with heat, the ends of the fibers at both cut edges 2 of the wiping tape 1a are, once melted and then hardened, turned into hard lumps of resin, as shown in FIG. 6, that deprive the fabric of the characteristic softness. When the wiping tape 1a is cut to a width of 10 mm or less, for example, a proportion of the hardened edge portions 2 to the entire fabric becomes high enough to damage the surface portion to be cleaned or cause a problem, namely, that of the lumps of resin coming off and thereby generating dust. Also there has been a problem that the hardened portions have higher rigidity and therefore to do not readily comply with small ups and downs on the surface, resulting in insufficient cleaning performance.
The present invention has been made to solve these problems, and has an object of providing a high performance cleaning tool that is capable of cleaning any tiny surface irregularities and the inside of tiny recesses or gaps of the object to be cleaned.